Punishment for fatal accident: Pen a postcard weekly to family for 15 years

October 25, 2010|By Stephen Hudak, Orlando Sentinel

For causing the accident that killed Army Sgt. Thomas E. Towers Jr., a two-tour veteran of the war in Iraq, 22-year-old Andrew Gaudioso was ordered to send the Eustis soldier's family a postcard every week for 15 years.

"He said he thinks of my son every day but, excuse me, I don't really believe that," said Towers' father, Thomas E. Towers Sr. "At first I thought I wanted prison [for Gaudioso]. Then I thought it would be better to force him some way to remember — at least once a week — what he did. I think this does that."

The unusual sentence, imposed this month by Circuit Judge G. Richard Singeltary, does not specify what Gaudioso should write on the postcard, which must be presented to his Lake County probation officer with the 28 cents postage paid. If he fails to send the weekly postcards, Gaudioso could be sent to prison for 15 years.

Creative sentences like Gaudioso's are a growing trend in American courtrooms, said Jonathan Turley, a constitutional-law expert at George Washington University and a critic of the practice, which often uses shame as punishment.

"Improvised justice is more often about entertaining the public than deterring the crime," he said of punishments that require defendants to wear chicken costumes, sleep in doghouses or tote degrading signs.

Turley said so-called creative punishments threaten to reverse centuries of progress in U.S. courtrooms, where justice has evolved from pre-colonial practices of public pillories, scarlet letters and tar-and-feathering to a system of thoughtful, consistent sentences designed to punish offenders and protect the public.

"There is ample embarrassment in any criminal conviction. But there is a sharp difference between shame from a punishment and shame as the punishment," Turley said. "These sentences have a corrosive effect on the legal system."

'It works here'

Putnam County Judge Peter Miller, who has sentenced hundreds of shoplifters to parade in public carrying a poster-size placard that reads, "I STOLE FROM THIS STORE," could not disagree more.

"They can say what they want," Miller said of critics. "It works here."

Miller, 66, who has spent a quarter-century on the bench in North Florida, said the creative sentence is often more effective as a deterrent than fines or incarceration because public embarrassment stings more.

"I've had people tell me, 'Put me in jail. I don't want to hold that sign.' That's how I know it's working," he said. "It holds them out as examples of what happens if you break the law, and it gives them some upbringing they obviously didn't get at home, but I do this because I want them to stop stealing. And we don't see a whole lot of recidivism."

In January, Alexandra Espinosa-Amaya, 24, who pleaded no contest to misdemeanor counts of simple battery and resisting an officer without violence for shoving an Orlando police officer, was ordered to walk in front of the Orlando Police Department draped in a hand-lettered poster. It read, "I battered a police officer. I was wrong. I apologize."

Circuit Judge Walter Komanski, who admitted that he, too, lifted his eyebrows when first presented with the proposed punishment, recalled that Espinosa-Amaya saw little value in the sentence she called "humiliating."

"But I got some feedback from officers who thought it was great," he said.

The judge, who withheld adjudication in the case, also required Espinosa-Amaya to attend an anger-management class, write a letter of apology to the police officer and perform 50 hours of community service.

"You can make different impacts in different ways," he said.

In the doghouse

A judge in Painesville, Ohio, occasionally orders misdemeanor offenders to wear costumes and carry props to bring attention to their crimes. He once forced three men convicted of soliciting sex from an undercover police officer to wear bright yellow chicken suits and hold a sign that read, "No Chicken Ranch in Painesville," a reference to a famous Nevada brothel. He also ordered two 19-year-olds who stole a baby Jesus statue from a church nativity scene to walk down the street with a donkey bearing a sign apologizing for the crime.

A Texas judge gave an abusive father a choice between serving 30 days in the county jail or sleeping 30 nights in a doghouse. The father, fearing he would lose his job if incarcerated for a month, chose the doghouse.

Despite the debatable constitutionality of some creative sentences, they are rarely if ever challenged because offenders generally accept them, figuring a few hours of public scorn is better than a month in jail, said William Dunlap, a professor at the Quinnipiac University School of Law in Connecticut, who keeps track of such sentences.